Tears of a Clown

Obama's torpor sends Andrew Sullivan into a heartbroken rage.

By

James Taranto

October 9, 2012

"I very much intend to win this election," the Associated Press quotes Barack Obama as saying at a San Francisco fundraiser last night. "But we're only going to do it if everybody is almost obsessive for the next 29 days."

Do we ever have bad news for Obama: He's even lost Andrew Sullivan, the most obsessive Obama-lover in the known universe.

It's good news for Sullivan, we suppose. It's been a long time since anybody paid attention to him, but his post last night, titled "Did Obama Just Throw the Entire Election Away?," has people buzzing. "The Pew poll is devastating, just devastating," Sullivan moans, citing a survey that is almost as excitable as himself. "Before the debate, Obama had a 51-43 lead; now, Romney has a 49-45 lead. . . . Seriously: has that kind of swing ever happened this late in a campaign? Has any candidate lost 18 points among women voters in one night ever? And we are told that when Obama left the stage that night, he was feeling good. That's terrifying."

Terrifying that somebody who lacks basic interpersonal skills has been in charge of American foreign policy for the past four years? No, to Sullivan, terrifying that he may not be for the next four. He accuses the president of being "too arrogant to take a core campaign responsibility"--i.e., preparing for the debates--"seriously," and of being "too arrogant to give his supporters what they deserve."

ENLARGE

This guy reminds us of Andrew Sullivan.
Getty Images

Which is what exactly? Obama's performance in the debate was lackluster, but when has he ever put in a performance that wasn't lackluster? We can think of three occasions: in his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, in his "race speech" (which was substantively wretched but effective at changing the subject, as his campaign needed at the time), and at his speech at the memorial after the Tucson massacre.

This columnist was surprised at Mitt Romney's performance in the debate. We expected him to be good, not masterful. But the peevish and callow Obama we saw was an entirely familiar figure. It was the Obama of the ObamaCare sales effort, of the 2010 campaign, of the debt showdown--the list could go on.

Obama is a cipher with one great political talent: the ability to capture the imagination of people like Andrew Sullivan, to persuade them that he is what they wish him to be. Sullivan's particular fantasy--and we are not making this up--is that Obama is the Road Runner from the old Warner Bros. cartoons, endlessly outwitting his opponents.

Well, meep meep, Andrew:

I'm trying to see a silver lining. But when a president self-immolates on live TV, and his opponent shines with lies and smiles, and a record number of people watch, it's hard to see how a president and his party recover. I'm not giving up. If the lies and propaganda of the last four years work even after Obama had managed to fight back solidly against them to get a clear and solid lead in critical states, then reality-based government is over in this country again. We're back to Bush-Cheney, but more extreme. We have to find a way to avoid that. Much, much more than Obama's vanity is at stake.

That's for sure. Andrew Sullivan's vanity is at stake too! So is the vanity of scores of other so-called journalists who surrendered all detachment to this fantasy figure with the perfectly creased pants who sent a thrill up their leg. As Mark Morford wrote in June 2008:

Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence--not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence--to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Now even Andrew Sullivan--one of the most enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people among those currently on the planet, at least in the sense Morford means--would probably be happy to settle for Obama as cackling overlord. It's not what he had hoped for, but it's better than torpid nonentity.

Poached Bird "Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns," the corporation behind "Sesame Street" writes in response to a new Obama TV spot. "We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down."

So Andrea Mitchell isn't the only puppet to have her likeness used without permission by the campaign. The ad, which you can see at National Review Online, is quite a piece of work. Here's the script:

Obama: I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message:

Narrator: Bernie Madoff. Ken Lay. Dennis Kozlowski. Criminals. Gluttons of greed. And the evil genius who towered over them? One man has the guts to speak his name.

Narrator: Mitt Romney, taking on our enemies no matter where they nest.

Where does one begin toting up the bizarre aspects of this ad? For one thing, Madoff, Lay and Kozlowski are criminals, but they are not "enemies." (An example of enemies would be the terrorists who killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, which the Obama administration blamed on a video.) Kozlowski and Lay were both convicted during the Bush administration; Lay has been dead for more than six years.

Romney never described Big Bird as an evil genius or an enemy or a menace; his actual quote from last week's debate was "I love Big Bird." He just sees no reason why "Sesame Street" should benefit from corporate welfare. Maybe the Obama ad will appeal to 5-year-olds--and with judges in several states having issued injunctions against voter-fraud measures, maybe some of them will cast ballots for the president--but to our mind it calls into question whether Obama can even be taken seriously.

And it's not as if the Big Bird ad is just some lark. It's part of the Obama campaign's "comeback" plan, the New York Times reported yesterday:

On the conference call convened by aides in Denver and Chicago even as the candidates were still on stage, there was no debate in the Obama campaign about the debate. None of the advisers fooled themselves into thinking it was anything but a disaster. Instead, they scrambled for ways to recover. They resolved to go after Mr. Romney with a post-debate assault on his truthfulness. Ad makers were ordered to work all night to produce an attack ad. And they would seize on Mr. Romney's vow to cut financing for Big Bird.

"You have to scratch your head when the president spends the last week talking about saving Big Bird," Politico quotes Romney as saying. "I actually think we need to have a president who talks about saving the American people and saving good jobs."

If the Romney campaign wants to match Obama's level of seriousness, it could cut an ad with Clint Eastwood interviewing an empty nest.

Now There's a Plan "Thursday's vice presidential debate is almost certainly the most important VP debate we've ever had. Rarely has a vice presidential candidate been as closely associated with his party's views and philosophical commitments as Paul Ryan is. And Obama really needs a blowout performance from Biden. Only rarely do presidential candidates need to bank so much on their running mates. The closest analogy is to George W. Bush, who needed and got a good 2004 performance from Dick Cheney after John Kerry routed Bush in the first debate. Biden feels a lot of pressure already, but my strong hunch is that he will deliver the mood-change Obama needs."--E.J. Dionne, Washington Post website, Oct. 9

Out on a Limb "Fitch Sees Policy Continuity in Venezuela After Chavez Win"--headline, Reuters, Oct. 8

Aurora Borealis Comes in View "Take a Flock of Seagulls, Feed Them Laxatives, Sit Back and Film Ensuing Mayhem as the Birds Poo on Roller-Skaters, Police and a Baby. Post on YouTube"--headline, Daily Mail (London), Oct. 8

Princeton Malaprop Proof that an Ivy League education doesn't necessarily make one literate comes from William Potter, Princeton Class of 1968. In an article for the Princetonian, the student newspaper, he endorses President Obama--all but one sentence, which says the opposite of what he intends:

I will be cruelly blunt: Any student who supports Mr. Romney betrays the intelligence and common sense that earned him or her admission into Princeton.

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